Citation: Pihkala, Panu. 2024. Engaging with Climate Grief, Guilt, and Anger in Religious Communities. Religions 15: 1052. https://doi.org/ 10.3390/rel15091052 Academic Editors: Ryan LaMothe and Storm Swain Received: 1 June 2024 Revised: 9 August 2024 Accepted: 26 August 2024 Published: 29 August 2024 Copyright: © 2024 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). religions Article Engaging with Climate Grief, Guilt, and Anger in Religious Communities Panu Pihkala Faculty of Theology, University of Helsinki, 00140 Helsinki, Finland; panu.pihkala@helsinki.fi Abstract: Climate change evokes many kinds of emotions, which have an impact on people’s behavior. This article focuses on three major climate emotions—guilt, grief, and anger—and other closely related emotional phenomena, such as climate anxiety/distress. The article explores ways in which these emotions could be engaged with constructively in religious communities, with a certain emphasis on Christian, monotheistic, and Buddhist communities. These religious communities have certain special resources for engaging with guilt and grief, but they often have profound difficulty working with constructive anger. The ways in which these emotions can affect each other are probed, and the complex dynamics of climate guilt are given special attention. Based on the work of psychologists Tara Brach and Miriam Greenspan, a four-step method of engaging with these emotions is proposed and discussed: self-reflection, exploration of various forms of these emotions, contextualization, and creative application of various methods to channel the energies in these emotions. The article draws from interdisciplinary research on eco-emotions, religion and ecology studies, and psychology. Keywords: climate emotion; climate anger; climate grief; climate guilt; eco-emotion; religion; spirituality; climate anxiety; climate distress; ecotheology 1. Introduction As the climate crisis grows more intense and complex, so do the affective responses. The broad phenomenon of climate anxiety has attracted growing attention (Ojala et al. 2021; Pihkala 2020a; Hickman et al. 2021). In addition to anxiety, fear, and worry, a wide array of other emotions and feelings have emerged: confusion, overwhelm, moral outrage, guilt, sadness, and hope—to name just a part of the array (for an overview, see Pihkala 2022c). These affective responses shape people’s actions and inactions in profound ways, and vice versa (e.g., Davidson and Kecinski 2022; Whitmarsh et al. 2022). 1 The role of religious communities in relation to climate emotions needs much more deliberation. It is evident that members of religious communities experience many kinds of climate emotions and that they are affected by the various socio-cultural forces that shape these emotional dynamics (e.g., Pihkala 2016; LaMothe 2022; McCarroll 2022; Swain 2020). It is also evident that the actions or inactions of religious communities, including religious environmental activism (e.g., Taylor et al. 2005), have effects on society that include emotional aspects. There is, however, only a limited amount of research on the topic (for examples, see O’Dell-Chaib 2019; Pihkala 2018; LaMothe 2024). In this article, the relationship between climate emotions and religious/spiritual communities is discussed, especially in relation to three wide-ranging emotions: guilt, sadness, and anger. All of these are, according to research and philosophers, essentially important and common climate emotions (Hickman et al. 2021; Pihkala 2022c; Ágoston et al. 2022a; Marczak et al. 2023). They are also emotions that are in many ways especially close to religious communities. Religious communities are universally places where sadness and grief are engaged with (e.g., Pargament et al. 2000), and most religions also engage strongly with guilt and norms about it (e.g., McNish 2010). Anger is more complex in relation to many religious communities, and religion has actually often increased ambiguity Religions 2024, 15, 1052. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15091052 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions